Being an artist, an art teacher, an educator, trying to make it all work in the 21st century.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

News/Views

NEWS: I'm very excited that one of my student's artwork was chosen to be displayed on a giant LED screen ("big screen plaza") at the National Art Education Association convention in NYC this spring (slide #133--a creative colored pencil drawing of a boy with a soccer ball for a head):
School: Leighton Elementary School
Teacher: Lois Schroeder-Girbino
Artist Name: Ben
Sequence #: 133 - Each slide has a sequence number in the lower right corner to let you know when your artwork will be showcased.
Approximate Display Time on Friday, March 2nd/Saturday March 3rd: 5:46 PM EST*
* Note: Be aware that while we hope the time-slots listed are accurate, we strongly advise arriving to the plaza at least 15 minutes before your display time, to allow for any small variances that may occur.
The slideshow features ~500 pieces of work, and will display Ben's artwork for approximately 20 seconds before moving on to the next artwork. This slideshow will be shown in its entirety on Friday, March 2nd from 5-8pm (EST) and again on Saturday, March 3rd from 5-8pm(EST). The address of the Big Screen Plaza is 851 Avenue of the Americas (between 29th and 30th St.), New York City.

That's the latest scoop, and I'm pleased that some of the newest units I implemented as part of my backwards-design (this piece was a result of the UbD "avatar" unit discussed earlier) resulted in positive feedback and cool art.

VIEWS: As for views, I am readying another reverse instruction video (screencast) and am looking for ways to streamline my student observation data. In both cases, these are tasks I have to do at home, but over the summer, I hope to get a nice repository of instructional videos and data tools organized for fall 2012. Just had our PD day, where the focus was the new Bloom's taxonomy "rigor/relevance framework", and designing inquiry-based lessons to support that. As always, I know that learning through the arts is one of the most cognitively rich and rewarding experiences for a student, and is what I aim for everyday in every lesson. I'm including a picture of the framework, and truly believe we are working in quadrant D most of the time in my art room. Fellow teachers came up with cool ideas, which sound a lot like the experiential stuff art teachers do all the time! Our group came up with a P.E., language arts/literacy, art integration unit idea---I always love connecting the dots with my peers :)